This New Study Says Women With Neurotic Personalities May Be More Likely to Develop Alzheimer's

Can your personality affect your risk for eventually developing Alzheimer's disease? New research suggests that women who experience jealousy, anger, moodiness, and guilt often (during middle age) were far more likely to develop the disease. Huh?

A paper recently published in the journal Neurology suggests that women with symptoms of neuroticism—specifically, those who worried more, had lower self-esteem, were more likely to react emotionally to events, worried more, and expressed more jealousy, guilt, and anger—were twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease.

Researchers evaluated the data from about 800 women who were between the ages of 38 and 54 in 1968, when they initially completed personality tests, and who continued to be evaluated regularly over the next (almost!) four decades. During each periodic evaluation, the women who had more symptoms of neuroticism also reported higher levels of stress. By the close of the study, 19 percent of the women had developed dementia.

Study author Dr. Ingmar Skoog said that stress could be the even bigger contributor: "It seems like the personality factor makes people more easily stressed, and if people are more easily stressed, then they have an increased risk of dementia."

Obviously, more research is still needed, and Skoog says that dealing with stress, worry, and jealousy won't eradicate Alzheimer's altogether. But, of course, eliminating those things as much as you can will certainly lead to better emotional health, at the very least.